Page 2297 - Shakespeare - Vol. 4

For there it revels, and when that decays,
The guilty rebel for remission prays.

So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, [715]
Who this accomplishment so hotly chased;
For now against himself he sounds this doom,

That through the length of times he stands disgraced.
Besides, his soul’s fair temple is defaced,
To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, [720]

To ask the spotted princess how she fares.

She says her subjects with foul insurrection

Have batter’d down her consecrated wall,
And by their mortal fault brought in subjection
Her immortality, and made her thrall [725]

To living death and pain perpetual:
Which in her prescience she controlled still,
But her foresight could not forestall their will.

Ev’n in this thought through the dark night he stealeth,
A captive victor that hath lost in gain, [730]

Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth,
The scar that will despite of cure remain;
Leaving his spoil perplex’d in greater pain:
She bears the load of lust he left behind,

And he the burden of a guilty mind. [735]

He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence,
She like a wearied lamb lies panting there;
He scowls, and hates himself for his offence,
She desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear.

He faintly flies, sweating with guilty fear; [740]
She stays, exclaiming on the direful night,
He runs, and chides his vanish’d loath’d delight.

He thence departs a heavy convertite,
She there remains a hopeless castaway;